Different

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Did you really think they would end? That you would be happy and I would be gone?

'No no no no no not this again.'

You can't escape me, Sapphire. It doesn't matter if you are in love or not, I'm here to stay.

'Get the hell away already.'

Suit yourself.
                                         ~
Sapphire found herself running from a dark mist, a shadow almost, in fear of what it would do to her if it got close enough. She ran and ran, falling over random items in the dim room.
It followed her everywhere, always getting a foot closer as the seconds went by. It got to her leg, sending a chill through her body, then the room changed. She was in a blue room now, no furniture or people in there besides herself. Then she saw a small flutter, a delicate figure dancing in the distance: a butterfly. It was small and white, glowing as if illuminated as if it were the moon itself. She reached out to touch it, but it only hurt her. Then she saw another butterfly. Then two. A hundred.

Hundreds.

Thousands.

They all rushed towards her, swirling around her head as if they were trying to get in, but all she could to was stand still in horror at how terrible they made her feel. They were so beautiful, yet so awful. She saw flashes of possible events, things that could potentially either hurt her or those around her.
She saw one butterfly that portrayed an image of her getting deathly sick, and another that showed her losing a friend. One showed a loved one's miscarriage, another showed her and Ruby being homeless, and the last one struck her the hardest: Ruby leaving her life, breaking all contact and forgetting that Sapphire ever existed. By the time she got to this one, she was on the floor, holding herself up with her arms and trembling. More and more were shown to her, each one getting worse and worse, and all she could do was watch. She couldn't speak, she could barely move, and she could barely breathe.
It seemed as if years had passed by while she was in the room, watching what could happen instead of living it herself and finding out, and the unpredictability of it all scared her, specifically the unpredictability of Ruby.
Up until this point, Sapphire thought that she had Ruby all figured out, that she knew what her behavior was like and how she would react to situations, but this only proved to her that she could never truly predict what Ruby was going to do next.
Sapphire heard a soft voice coming from the distance. It crescendoed until the voice stopped right in front of her. It was her mother.

"Sapphire, get off of the floor."

She tried to resist, to stay on the ground, but she found herself standing up against her will.

"Why are you here?" Sapphire whimpered.
"I've always been here, sweetheart. I love you, and I would never leave you, unlike that Ruby girl. She's such a handful, Sapphire, I really don't understand how you could be with her-"
"She is not a handful at all, and I'm with her because I love her, and she loves me."
"Not for long~"
"What do you mean?"
"You saw it yourself; she will leave, and you will come home. You will be married to a rich man in no time since you're so gorgeous-well, at least most of your face is. We still need to fix up that eye. Either way, you'll forget about her and be the proper girl you were meant to be."
"No."
                                         ~
Ruby snapped awake at the sound of Sapphire crying in the bathroom. She got up and ran in, finding the girl sitting in the empty tub and shivering. She could tell she saw something that shook her up.
They talked for a little while, holding each other close and eventually going back to the bed.
"Sapphire, do you really think I would hurt you like that?" Ruby asked, stroking her hair gently to help her relax.
"No, but the way I saw it, the way it looked in the dream, it was just...so real. It scared me to see how real it felt and how easily you could break my heart."
Ruby sighed.
"I would never do that, Sapphy."
She kissed the shorter girl's forehead. Sapphire moved in closer and they held each other for the rest of the night, whispering soft reassurances, not going back to sleep until the sun rose.

It was only 2:30 am.